Abstract
This study examines the role of religion in lives of the Japanese migrants in the Czech Republic. Scholars have been dealing with issues concerning both the religiosity and migration for a long time. The contemporary sociology of religion offers various theoretical and methodological tools to approach both social phenomena; nevertheless, regarding the transformative character of both of them, it remains difficult to characterize the nexus of the various modes of religiosity and migration development. Based on critics of contemporary research on migrants’ religiosity, I propose a qualitative approach that builds upon the postulates of theories of transnationalism and draws on Jean-Claude Kaufmann’s method of understanding interviews. The method of gaining and analysing the interviews conducted with the Japanese living long-term in the Czech Republic allowed me to observe the process of religious identity construction, or in other words to uncover the deeper levels of claims concerning their relationship with religion. The results of my empirical investigation and analysis show that 1) not all migrants create transnational identities, 2) the method of understanding interview allowed some respondents to construct their own individualized and fragmented religious identities, 3) not all religious identities of migrants can be interpreted as transnational.
Highlights
In the last decades, there has been a lot of academic attention paid to migration processes and its impact on dif-How to cite this paper Tlcimukova, P. (2014) The Religiosity of Japanese Migrants in the Czech Republic
As the title itself suggests, it is the aim of this study to examine the role that religion has in lives of Japanese migrants in the Czech Republic
Unlike the others who were creating an individualized religious mosaic, Chikos already consciously existing and coherent reli gious identity had been confronting other socio-cultural types of identities. Her coherent religious identity was interpreted as influenced and modified, for example, by different cultural specifics of the Czech Republic. It was not the aim of the research to deal with the topic of integration; rather I intended to answer the questions as to how the religious identity is constructed in the narratives of Japanese migrants and what role religion has in their lives as migrants
Summary
There has been a lot of academic attention paid to migration processes and its impact on dif-. Academic reflections on the Japanese relationship with religion exaggerate many poignant theoretic-methodological questions concerning the sociological study of religiosity, some of which may be: ethic versus Emic research, the definition of religion, the disjunction of the secular and religious social spheres etc. Both migration and religious studies are theoretically and methodologically heterogeneous in principle They both offer various approaches and questions for scholars to deal with. As the title itself suggests, it is the aim of this study to examine the role that religion has in lives of Japanese migrants in the Czech Republic. Using the method of understanding interview, I detect that fragments of both institutionalized and individualized religious identities function transnationally and are strictly locally bounded
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